[B][U]Chapter 33: Ashes to Ashes
“Jacob, we need to get in there!” I screamed. He nodded, and looked around. We walked around the facility a bit.
“What is this place?” Kif asked. “It took so long to run here; and I was on the freaking track team!”
“It’s the place where I first met Jacob. ” I explained.
“My gramps used to own this place.” Jacob added. “Ah, here.” He said, feeling along the ground. He brushed away the snow with his red, cold hands to reveal a door in the ground. An entrance to the cellar of the Dover Facility. Jacob kicked at the door and it came crashing through. He took a step down cautiously and motioned for us to follow him. This was where we would have to hide; like a bunch of rats. We followed him down into the basement, and shut the cellar door behind us. Jacob flipped a switch on the wall, and the room illuminated.
The room around us was odd. It was obviously a nursery, but it was huge! Everything was larger than a normal baby item; I felt as though I was stepping into a really bad diaper story.
“This was my old room.” Jacob explained. It didn’t shock me too much that this was where Jacob had stayed while in the facility; but it did shock me that his grandfather had all this built just for him. His grandpa either really hated him, or really loved him. I wasn’t about to ask which of the two choices was the correct one.
Jacob sighed. “We can stay here a bit until we can figure out what to do. I don’t think Justin will come looking for us here.” He declared.
“You better be right.” Kif said uncomfortably.
“Don’t worry Kif; we’ll make it through this.” I assured him. He nodded.
“If I’m right, there should be emergency supplies upstairs; just in case of emergency. My grandpa would have used this place as a hideout if he would have ever been in serious trouble; so his stash of food and drinks should be around here somewhere. The basement covers the entirety of the facility, so there should be a switch or a fake wall somewhere around here.” He declared.
“Fake wall? Hell, this isn’t Scooby Doo Jacob!” I yelled.
“Tristian, I know that. It’s my grandpa’s facility. I know where he would have hid it, too.” He winked.
“Look around for anything with a money symbol on it. Chances are it’ll have a switch in it or something that’ll open the door.” He said. The three of us looked around the basement, but to no avail.
“Jacob, there isn’t anything with a money symbol on it anywhere down here!” I declared. I was right, of course. There wasn’t anything with any kind of money symbol on it anywhere in this gigantic nursery.
“Jacob, we need to get upstairs. The lower down we are, the colder we’ll be!” I said.
“My grandpa had this place paid for in bills for a good ten years. I can turn on the heat in a few minutes.” Jacob said.
“What the hell is with your grandpa dude?” Kif asked.
“A lot of things were with him. One of those things was an obsession for money, and the other was the obsession for power. He had both.” Jacob said.
“What’s with all the baby furniture?” Kif asked. Jacob and I sighed.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s not important!” I responded sharply. Then I sighed.
“Jacob, let’s go look upstairs. Maybe we’ll find something up there?” I suggested. Jacob nodded. The three of us went upstairs and into the main part of the facility. Now everything was coming back to me. Being held and taken through these halls to Jacob’s room, being taken out of the building and put into the van headed out of the state? It all seemed like something that I could so easily handle now. Now, nothing seemed impossible. I’d lost everything but Jacob, and my own life. Besides that; I had nothing. A night and day meant to be fun, was tarnished by terrible things. Terrible, gut wrenching things that would make any person surely want to die. But I didn’t kill myself. I wasn’t going to run away from Justin, just to have myself die by my own hand. That wouldn’t make much sense, now would it?
We walked through the facility for a good twenty minutes before Jacob stopped in front of a room, a large ‘Caution!’ symbol attached to it. Jacob ignored the sign and walked in though. Inside was a near pharmacy worth of Drugs.
“Fucking hell…” He said. He looked over at a very specific drug. His red eyes fixated on it. He grabbed the container off the shelf and held it in his hand rightly, reading it.
“Jacob, what is that?” I asked.
“The J-Drug.” He responded. “My drug.”
“Your drug?” Kif asked.
“You didn’t think this white hair and red eyes thing was natural, did you?” He queried. “This is a regressive drug, Tristian. My father supposedly had bought if off of some lady in Ohio, so my old file said. I think it’s a load of bullshit, but… the drug did its job. Only thing was, my Grandpa had his scientists change it a bit, creating what they called the ‘J’ variant.” He stated. I was shocked. I hadn’t ever known that his regression was through the power of drugs. “This was the thing that made my mind have to split in two to protect me from what was going on. This is probably one of the most powerful drugs on this planet. The J-drug,” Jacob continued “is my drug. When I was first forcibly regressed, my father had decided to try several different methods of regression. One was hypnosis, and the other was drug use… the drug went through different phases. In the first, I began to lose bladder control. The second made me lose bowel control; and seemed to regress my thoughts. At that point my hair turned white and my eyes turned red. The third caused me to lose total control, and the fourth was full regression. That coupled with the constant hypnosis caused me to have a split personality.”
“Woah…” Was all that Kif could manage to say. I said nothing.
“Give them to me.” Kif demanded. “If that guy comes, I’ll down them. If I’m going out, I’m doing it in a way I’m not gonna feel.” He finished. I looked over at him oddly.
“Are you freaking nuts?!” I asked. “That shit could kill you on the spot! You might stand a chance of living!” I declared.
Then we heard it… The crash.
“Not anymore.” Jacob said. He looked over and grabbed a vial. “Okay, whoever it is we need to be ready. I’m taking this.” He stated. “Hydrochloric acid.” He said. He grabbed a large syringe and stabbed through the cover, extracting the whole vial’s worth of acid into it. “This can kill, and I’m not about to die.”
I looked around the room and grabbed a broom handle from the corner. Kif grabbed nothing. Instead, he just sighed. “Let’s just see who or what it is.” He suggested. “Maybe it’s just an animal?” he said.
“No… It’s trouble.”
We peered out of the room, and silently creped around the facility. We kept hearing footsteps, but saw nothing. Then we heard another crash coming from behind us. We ducked around a corner and looked back.
“Come on out boys!” We heard. It was definitely our worst nightmare come true.
“Shit, how did he know to come here?” I asked quietly.
“He has all the files from the case your dad put up against Nick and Terry. Chances are that those files have information on the facility too.” He explained. Kif started chuckling softly to himself.
“What the hell’s so funny?!” I asked.
“We’re gonna die.” Kif chuckled. “We’re done for.” He was right. At this point, I was absolutely soaked, scared, and panting. I didn’t want to die yet; not here. Not like this!
Kif then somehow managed to grab the syringe from Jacob. “Sorry.” Was all he could say. He shoved us back and started to yell.
“Why don’t you come out?” He screamed. Jacob and I began to run. Justin started running down the hall; we could hear his every foot step. We ducked behind a large desk area, just barely peeking our heads out enough to where we could see Kif. Justin was coming around the corner. Unfortunately…. He saw us. We heard a shot fire, Jacob and I screamed!
“This is it… we’re done.” I thought.
“Justin! How could you do this?!” I screamed from behind the desk. Luckily, it was one of those huge desks that had a bottom to it.
“How could I do this? EASILY! YOU KILLED MY DAUGHTER!” He screamed.
“What do you mean I killed her?!” I asked.
“She killed herself Tristian; all because of you! You just had to… you just had to like Jacob, didn’t you?! You killed her! You killed my baby girl! When I got back to the house… when I got back your name was written in her blood on the floor! Your name Tristian, YOUR NAME!” He screamed in despair. Shit, now I’d killed someone! This couldn’t be happening. Everyone I thought was my friend was either unable to do anything, or after me now.
“Justin! I’m sorry; I didn’t know she would do that! PLEASE! JUST STOP NOW!” I cried.
“Stop? I’ve shot police officers, burned a house, and you think I should stop?! If I stop now, my daughter will have died in vain!” He screamed, beginning his rush towards us. We cried loudly, Jacob and me. I held onto him, regardless of the fact that I was now leaking. It was over. I was going to die, lying in my own puddle of urine and soon to be pooling, blood! This was the end of me. The end of the world as I knew it. The end… of Justin.
As Justin rushed towards us, we heard a grunt, and then nothing. Jacob and I looked over the desk one final time, to see Kif holding a needle of hydrochloric acid, that was jabbed into Justin’s chest. Justin coughed up some blood, shockingly holding his gun towards Kif. “This is the way your world ends. Don’t think you’ll get away with shooting my best friend in the whole damn world you son of a bitch. Go ahead, kill me away.” He muttered. Then he pushed on the needle, its contents emptying into Justin. Justin’s body began to collapse as he shrieked in pain, his heart literally melting inside of him; decaying quickly and painfully. As he collapsed though… he was able to fire one last shot from his gun. One last shot. One final blow to Kif. One final blow to my comrade.
“KIF!” I screamed.
Not much happened after that. Jacob and I sat and cried as Kif slowly passed away. The police were called after we hailed down a random driver on the icy road that evening. My world was never the same.
(Present time)
I shut my notebook. “That’s all I have written down. There are no more notebooks after that. The only thing that happened after that was that we were taken to you in the hospital.” I explained.
“Yes lad, that’s true. I still feel lucky that my leg was the only thing hurt.” He stated.
“Yeah, so do we.” Jacob said. “If it wasn’t for that, you two wouldn’t have been able to take us in until we went to college!” Jacob stated. This was true. After everything that had happened; Jacob and I had no one left to care for us.
“Boys, I’m glad that you were able to finally do this. It gives me a new perspective on everything.” Gavin explained. I nodded.
“Don’t mention it.” I said.
“But I do have one question. I replied standing up. Jacob followed suit, and I looked over at Gavin and Olivia. “Jacob and I have to go do something tonight. We’ll be back later, promise.” I assured him. He nodded.
Jacob and I hopped back into the car, and drove for a short while until we came across a burnt area. The ground around the house had recovered… but the burnt bits of the house were still there. Still sitting as they were supposed to that evening twenty years ago. Still standing how I had last seen them. I collapsed on the ground, looking at the remains as I exited the car. I cried deeply as Jacob leaned over and consoled me.
“Mom… Justin… Rebecca… Kif.” I cried. “I wish you were here. I’m sorry this all had to happen… If I hadn’t have flipped out; this would have never happened!” I screamed. I moaned in agony.
“Tristian, this wasn’t your fault!” Jacob said, grabbing me and turning me to face him. “This wasn’t your fault!” He said.
“Jacob…” I muttered, holding onto him in the snow. It felt almost the same as the night we had left.
Then I looked back at the burned building. For a split second, I could have sworn I could see my mother, Justin and Rebecca waving to me. Kif though… wasn’t in my brief day dream. Hell, I don’t even know if it was a day dream!
“Jacob, look!” I said; looking to his face and pointing towards the rubble. But as I started to look back… there was nobody there.
“I think we should go back now Tristian.” Jacob stated.
“Yeah. Let’s… let’s try to have a good Christmas at least.” I said. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”
And as we drove away, for a final time I looked back. Low and behold, I saw a ghostly figure of Kif waving to be from where our car had been. His lips moved slowly, so I could read them enough to get what he had said.
“Don’t worry.” Were his final words before his ghostly figure disappeared into the Christmas night. Don’t worry…
-Mikeru117
“A righteous man has the right to live, so long as he is truly righteous.” –Adam Bachewsky
(WRITER’S NOTE : Sorry for probably spamming up your forum guys! Still, I hope you enjoyed. If you do read this 50k+ word story, please comment and let me know what you think! Thanks again.)